“India has to feed a large number of people. We can’t ignore the potentials of GM crops. We, no doubt, need to be careful, and have proper controls and effective regulations.”

He noted that varieties of wheat, rice and other crops that are cultivated today were developed over the centuries from the wild varieties through various man-made techniques of selection. “Genetic modification is just another tool for selection [developed scientifically].”

The Tamil Nadu Vivasayigal Sangam affiliated to Communist Party of India (CPI) said that the farmers who had raised rain fed crops had suffered heavy loss due to the failure of North-East monsoon a

Horil Singh, a farmer from Rajapakkar village of Vaishali district in Bihar, has been seeing fluctuations in rainfall pattern and temperature for almost a decade now.

This has impacted his paddy and pulse produce to a large extent till a global initiative launched in 2010, to help small farmers in dealing with climate change, helped him in creating vertical drainage systems that let excess rainwater seep quickly back into a natural acquifer.

Darez Ahamed says hydrograph for 15 years shows horizontal trend

Farmers are hopeful of restoring Perambalur’s pride as the number one producer of onion in the State if the government heeds Collector Darez Ahamed to reclassify the groundwater status of the district.

What we desperately close our mind to is once again becoming pronounced ever more clearly: climate change is here; it is already bringing devastating extreme weather events; and it will become wors